Sunday, 26 March 2017

I brought
my kids to watch Beauty and the Beast this weekend. Some may think that I have
done the paternally irresponsible thing. I can hear their concern here: "Don't you know that the once wholesome movie
is now contaminated by unwholesome element? Shouldn't you have exercised some
discretion?"

Well, I
will come to that later. But for now, here's what my kids told me about the
movie. They loved it. My youngest said that it was so romantic. My middle child
said that she'd rather the beast remain as the beast because he is so cute.
That's true. The beast is indeed adorable.

If a female version of Star Wars' Chewbacca were ever romantically involved with Sean Connery, their
byproduct would be the Beast. The Beast’s fur, pout, tantrums and
reverberating, bassy voice were unmistakably charming, even endearing. I think
they got the chemistry between hideousness and affableness just right. And I am
glad my kids loved the movie.

It was no
doubt exquisitely done and the magical world it created draws you in like a
child being invited up the garden path to one's childhood fantasy. Kudos to the music too. It transported
the moviegoer into a timeless fairytale land of mystery, intimacy and hope.

As for the
unwholesome part, let me just say that it is a familiar movie with the usual,
predictable plot notwithstanding the gay moment in it. Lefou is anything but
straight in the movie, and I can understand that that rubs the Christian the
wrong way.

However,
there are many unwholesome moments in the movie too. In addition to the gay
moment, there are the attempted-murder moment, the lying-in-your-face moment,
the narcissist moment, the chauvinism moment, the fornication-in-thoughts
moment, the cowardice moment, the killing-the-Beast-off moment, and many others
- some necessary to the storyline, others
not quite.

And that
compels me to ask, “Is Lefou's role as a
gay necessary?”

Well, I've
to admit that it was not. You lose nothing of the plot if Lefou was just a
fawning heterosexual with a comical tongue and a silly face. As such, the
director or producer could have just edited it out of the script. Or maybe they
could downplay it so that Lefou was merely seen as just sharing a friendship
moment with Gaston without the wink, the hug and the belly hickey.

In this
way, it would be construed as a friendship no different from that of David and
Jonathan's in the Bible. And since I am at it here, I would say that the
1.2-second dance scene with a male partner at the last part of the movie is
also unnecessary.

So, what was Disney thinking right? How can
they throw a pink spanner into the whole family-friendly works? Isn't this gay
propaganda, loaded with LGBT agenda? Isn't this a queer-ish back masking effort
to instill subliminal message into young and impressionable minds?

Well, it
could be all those things or maybe not, but my family and I know where we stand
on them. My youngest (at 6) was completely oblivious to the gay moment.
Instead, she was dumbstruck by the be-my-guest and grand-ballroom-dancing
moments. And my 11-year-old and 14-year old were the least affected by it. For
them, and myself, Beauty and the Beast was much more than the homophilic wink
and flirting.

The moral
of the story is still moral in spite of the morally questioning parts. Unlike
midnight cowboy, brokeback mountain or milk, the gay moments are fleeting,
readily missable, and most importantly, it would have remained so if not for
the publicity it had received.

It is thus
no wonder that in a packed theatre, the audience just went trigger-happy
whenever Lefou appeared in the movie. His every move - however routine and bland - invited giggles quite instinctively.
And ironically, the free publicity may just be one of the reasons the film has
become the highest grossing Disney movie for this season ($170m – 3-day tally),
beating Finding Dory ($166m). So, intended or not, the producers and Disney are
laughing all the way to the bank now.

Be that as
it may, my point is that the timeless message in Beauty and the Beast is still
about love, that is, the love between a daughter and her father, and the love
between a commoner and a cursed prince. It is also about sacrifices when the
daughter took the place of her father as the prisoner in the Beast's castle.

With or
without Lefou's antics, the movie is still a bedtime story we share with our
kids about the courage of a young girl, the kindness she had shown to a
monster, and in return, how the monster was touched and transformed by her
kindness.

In fact, we
all know the real monster in the movie is not the Beast. The real beast is the
one who eats 5 dozen eggs, yes, Gaston.
He is the veritable monster in the movie, and I see a parallel between the
Prodigal Son(s) and Beauty and the Beast.

You will
note that the Beast is like the younger prodigal son who partied all night,
squandered his inheritance away, and was defiant about his wayward conduct
until he was cursed tobecome a beast
for as long as he remains unrepentant. As for the other older son, he is very
much like Gaston who did everything expected, proper and popular in the eyes of
the world. Yet, nothing has changed inside, except for what he has projected
outside for all to see. His chivalry is self-serving. His courage is
self-glorifying. Alas, form, for Gaston,
always precedes substance.

Ultimately,
in the movie, love prevailed, overcame and won. The fate of each character says
it all. Gaston was unrepentant till the very end, and his end was wrought by
his own hands. Like the older prodigal son, his heart remained unchanged, cold
and self-seeking.

The Beast
was of course one of the stars of the movie together with Belle. Their love
broke all barriers. It broke the appearance barrier, the hate barrier, and the
invulnerability barrier.

And the
magical moment in the movie is not so much when Belle kissed the Beast, and he
was transformed into a prince along with the other kitchen wares, cutlery and
lighting appliances who magically turned into the noble French human workforce.
No, the magical moment however is when the Beast asked Belle whether she is
happy to stay with him in the castle. Belle replied, "How can I be happy if I'm not free?"

That was
when it dawned on the Beast that enduring love is about sacrifice, freedom and
trust. If you love someone, you not only set her free, but trust that she will
return to you not by force, but by free will. And return Belle did, because
love, being selfless, knows no boundary. That about sums up the moral of the
story for me.

So, the
movie has a lot to teach my children. And the lessons are timeless. Even Lefou
himself was not blind to Gaston's excesses. In the end, Lefou switched sides.
He came to his senses. He grew a conscience unlike his abusive master. Although
he played the part of a gay, he was nevertheless a gay with heart and soul.

Some
Christians would have wished that the script would go further with that switch.
Maybe Lefou could find true love too - with the opposite sex of course. But the
world doesn't always go the way we want it to go. The movie is a microcosm of
what the real world is like. Its fidelity is to our reality.

Our world
is diverse, imperfect and flawed, but yet not irredeemable. No one is therefore
beyond the reach of love. Maybe the producers could do a sequel to Beauty and
the Beast and call it Lefou and the Switch. But I won't hold my breath for it.

The world
is made up of the likes of Gaston, the Beast, Belle and yes, even Lefou - whether we like it or not. And that will
not change. Disney will continue to do what she deems fit to churn out
megahits. They are accountable to their stakeholders.

And as for
me, as a father, a husband and a Christian, I too am accountable to my family,
marriage and God. In my own fallen nature, I will stand for what is right, true
and honourable. Parenthood is always a fraught road with many twists, turns, and
bends. Sometimes, I take the road less travelled. At other times, I lapse into
the broad road. Still at other times, I confront a crossroad struggling with my
own demons.

But I do
not see bringing my kids to watch the movie a detour or derailment in this
journey of mutual growth with them because my family's takeaway after the movie
is not that it promotes a certain value incongruent with ours. On the contrary,
it is a movie that teaches my kids some important lessons as I have written
above. And the most relevant lesson of all is this: there is always a place for
love in all relationships to bridge the gap, and this love transforms hearts by going beyond our differences, not reminding us of how different we are from them. Cheerz.

Yesterday (Wed, 22 March), after sending my daughter to school, I saw a father cycling
to school with his son as his pillion rider. He then put him down and waved
goodbye. As usual, he stood there and watched his son entered the school
building before he cycled off. But after peddling for a while, he stopped. He
looked up to the sky and paused in thought for a while.

That image caught my attention because this father just lost his son -
his eldest son. His son was about 15 when he was playing basketball in school.
He suddenly collapsed and passed away thereafter.

Today's papers also talked about two other deaths. Two young MRT
trainees died last year in Singapore's worst rail accident. Asyraf's and
Nasrulhudin's parents were inconsolable. Asyraf's parents and family were in
Mecca for their pilgrimage when the accident happened. They rushed back when
the news broke.

And Nasrulhudin's mother, Madam Norizan, broke down, saying this,
"I was speechless. I felt my entire body shaking...I just cried." She
recalled that her son always made the effort to spend time with the family. And
last year, they spent their first Hari Raya without him.

Asyraf's mother, Mdm Rosma, would visit his grave every day at Lim Chu
Kang for the first 100 days. It reports that "on Monday, the housewife,
54, braved the rain to do so again with flowers in her arms and prayers on her
lips. It was her son's birthday. (He) would have turned 25."

Lesson? Just one.

Rabbi Harold Kushner, who lost his son to progeria at 15 years old,
and the author of "When bad things happen to good people," said:-

"I am a more sensitive person, a more effective pastor, a more
sympathetic counselor because of Aaron's life and death than I would ever have
been without it. And I would give up all those gains in a second if I could
have my son back. If I could choose, I would forgo all of the spiritual growth
and depth which has come my way because of our experiences, and be what I was
fifteen years ago, an average rabbi, an indifferent counselor, helping some
people and unable to help others, and the father of a bright, happy boy. But I
cannot choose."

Life doesn't give us that choice. Good and bad things happen to the
best of us. When they come, they come. And when they come, our struggles are
endless. Even when we finally do overcome, growing in depth in return, we are
still at best a broken vessel, and never completely whole.

Our healing over time is a healing with brokenness, and not apart from
it. The pain never goes away. But we have grown deeper in soul and spirit to
keep it from overwhelming us. It is like we have expanded the rooms in our
heart to allow a guest to stay a little longer. He is one guest that reminds us
of our past. He is one guest that tells us about stories of a time with
our loved ones.

Mdm Rosma said that a lady came up to her and told her how her son had
helped her in an accident. She said her son came down from his motorbike to
assist. Mdm Rosma said, "They come by our home, and that is a way (for me
to remember him). They also tell me stories of how they spent their time
together."

If DNA is the building block of life, then stories are the building
blocks of our soul. We make these stories every day with our loved ones, our
children, our close friends. These stories are simple stories of love,
sacrifices, hope, nurture and devotion (even reconciliation).

Each of them, however mundane it appears then, becomes our
healing partner in the journey to our recovery. They come alive when our loved
ones are gone and nudge us in the direction that we should take to find our own
strength, hope and joy again.

Treasure
these stories you are making with them now. Make every one an intimate journey.
For every encounter, experience and adventure with them forms the reservoir of
hope, faith and love we will be called upon to draw on when the time comes for
us to confront and overcome life's most painful struggle - their unavoidable
loss. Cheerz.

Sunday, 19 March 2017

"Consider
it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds,
because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let
perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not
lacking anything."